This GWR (pre-WW2) layout is a work in progress and further progress is being made all the time. It is finescale 00 and the track is C&L with handmade points operated by Tortoise point motors. The station is ‘Kingsferry’, and was originally going to be based on Kingsbridge in Devon, but somehow it became fictional, with a gentle ‘nod’ to that real life terminus.

Our featured image of the station throat shows the benefits of handbuilt track, and the way the track bed flows through the landscape. To borrow a phrase from EMGS (and remember this is 00) – achievable excellence!

The signal box with a full interior is a Bachmann Special produced for Kernow Models, modified and repainted, as is the water crane.

Escape to the allotment with cold frames, shed and Austin 7, and the station pig sty.

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Some views of the beautifully lit station. The station building has been ‘cobbled together’ from two of the superb Ratio kits based on Castle Cary with much modification. The engine shed is scratchbuilt from Wills Sheets.

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And some nicely weathered trains – still unusual for a pre-nationalisation layout. Most of the coaches are Comet, other rolling stock and wagons are Mallard Models, D & S Models, Slaters and others, mostly found on Ebay and much modified and detailed, as well as Parkside Dundas, Coopercraft and even Hornby and Bachmann ready to run. Locos are Bachmann, Hornby or Oxford Rail, detailed and weathered. Favourite locos from all four grouping companies are featured below. A new addition being Oxford Rail’s excellent Dean Goods, with additional detail and real coal, and weathered by Grimy Times.

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No doubt that the pride of the fleet is a rare Mallard Models double slip!

Goods facilities have not been forgotten and there is a bustling goods yard, though not so busy that grass can’t grow along the sidings:

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Most recent addition is some characterful railway cottages filling the space behind the buffer stops.

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The original intention was to place a farm opposite the allotments, but instead a barn has been placed there created from two Ratio kits cobbled together with a corrugated iron roof (Wills) on the barn in lieu of the stone slated roof supplied. Very bucolic it looks too!

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A Victorian cottage was planned for the space near the bridge from the outset, and now after a long wait the gap has been filled! It is scratch built from Wills limewashed stone with a wash of colour, originally to tone down the vivid white but ending up like random stone, which is fine in the context of the railway’s Devonian vernacular. The roof once again is Wills slate sheet, and the windows are Brassmaster, being leftovers from the ‘spares box’. The outside privvy and shed are Ratio.

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The layout has received a few additions lately – ground signals, point levers, and a signal for the bay platform. The bare plywood visible in front of the yard in early photos is now a timber yard with sawmill. Various sheds have been added which essentially completes the railway element of the layout! As before proprietary buildings have been adapted and modified as appropriate. Pre-cast concrete sheds were being extensively used in the 1930s, but pallets, though in existence, weren’t the builder just happens to like them!

Priority now is more rolling stock and to build a first loco from a kit. In a meantime this local coal wagon was found in a spares box at RailWells and detailed and weathered. It turns out it is an old Cambrian kit that came pre-lettered – as may have been used at Pendon!

One day the layout may be extended beyond the railway cottages to show the beginnings of the town of Kingsferry – few layouts are ever truly finished!